1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for dynamically configuring current sharing and fault monitoring in redundant power supply modules.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One area of computer technology that has seen substantial advances is power supply technology. Computer power supplies are designed to meet the maximum load expected in a given product installation. If the product has multiple option bays (e.g., PCI adapter slots or drive bays), then the power supply must be capable of powering the product with all system slots populated with devices having the maximum wattage allowed in any given slot. Furthermore, some power supplies are implemented in a redundant configuration where current load is shared between the power supplies. In active current sharing systems, the power supplies share the current load within a particular tolerance. The power supplies also report current sharing faults when the difference in the amount of current load shared between the power supplies exceeds that a predetermined amount, called a fault reporting tolerance. In power supplies today such tolerances are static values, set by the manufacturer of the power supply an unchangeable during operation of the power supply. Currently there remains a need to reconfigure such tolerances dynamically and automatically without human intervention during operation of the power supplies.